There was a guy that came to Koh Phangan while I lived there. He called himself Shiva... though I hear he calls himself something completely different nowadays. So many "spiritual" guys call themselves Shiva. It's a bit of a cliche, really.
Anyway, this particular Shiva made a bit of a noisy fanfare for himself, and word went round the spiritual community I was involved with, like wildfire. Everybody was super-excited, because there was this guy who could tap into the Akashic Records.
(For those of you who have never heard of The Akashic Records, let me explain what it is supposed to be. Basically, it is a giant ethereal "spiritual" library in which everything that has EVER happened is recorded... even that fart you just did two minutes ago. It's in the Akashic Records already. Whether or not there is any such thing as The Akashic Records is anyone's guess. The concept was first introduced to the West by Madame Blavatsky, who has fairly questionable credentials).
For those who know of the Akashic Records, hearing that there was some mystical magician who could tap into them was fairly exciting... even for a jaded old dude like me who has been on the spiritual trail for thirty plus years. So, yes, even though he was charging over the odds for his workshop, I went along. Curiosity got the better of me, again! Silly old me! You know, of course, that curiosity killed the cat!
Each time I hear of someone who has supposedly got the answer, I am drawn in; even though I know in my heart of hearts - through simple experience - that I am going to be disappointed, yet again!
Shiva managed to disappoint me in record time. He asked for us all to write our names on bits of paper... maybe he also asked for our birth dates too, I can't remember. Anyway, like many a hippie on the spiritual path, I have a name that is not my birth name.
One of Shiva's minions came to me and told me that Shiva wanted to know my birth name.
I was curious as to why he would need me to tell him, because he should surely be able to find it out from the Akashic Records. There's a record of it at the Registrar's Office in Glasgow. I'm sure that information got duplicated to The Akashic Records. I was too polite to point this out, so duly gave up my birth name, but I was already deeply unimpressed.
Most of the audience were fresh meat; mainly young women in their twenties, enjoying the first exciting hot flushes of spirituality; that happy honeymoon of deep epiphanies which precedes the horrible hangover when the real work has to begin. They were the perfect foil for Mister Shiva, who played them like an out of tune violin. It was cringeworthy in the extreme.
I could see that Mister Shiva could see I was onto him. Every time I caught his eye he would look nervously away. He was, basically, a shifty cunt. Pardon my French, but I loathed him on sight. He was at it, big time... an out and out charlatan.
And to me, transparently so. He used the fishing techniques that psychic "mediums" so often use to elicit information... and he was fumblingly bad at it too. I mean, almost every single person in that audience was told that they had a difficult relationship with their mother or father. And I could see the faces of those in the audience light up when he shared this startlingly obvious truth with them. Though sometimes Shiva got it screamingly wrong. On a number of occasions, he would choose the wrong parent and the person he was "reading" would say something like "no, I got on fine with my father" and Shiva, without dropping a beat, would say something like "I'm feeling a mother energy" and his mark would brighten and say, "yes, I had a very difficult relationship with my mother"... and the whole fucking audience would sit in gormless, unthinking raptures. It was appalling to witness!
I remember one lassie... a real wide-eyed and highly attractive innocent... she is now an acclaimed spiritual teacher these days... let's call her Olga... Shiva pounced on her and told her about her troubles with her mother... whom she had no problem with... but then Shiva realised it was Olga's father that Olga had problems with... and then Shiva went off on a flight of fancy, explaining to Olga that the reason she had difficulty with her father was because SEVEN lifetimes ago (note that number, seven) Olga and her father had been Basque Terrorists AND lovers... and if I remember rightly, they both died in action.
Now I didn't know exactly when ETA came into existence at the time, but I knew it was post Second World War. It turns out the group was actually founded in 1959, which means - according to Shiva - Olga managed to squeeze in SEVEN lives between 1959 and 2011 (the year Shiva put on his show)... and as Olga was already well into her 20s, I'm figuring she must have died seven times between 1959 and 1990... making her average age of mortality a little bit less than 5 years old. To die once at that age is bad luck... to die that age seven times in a row... well, you must wonder about Olga's karma.
Shiva trotted out several karmic anomalies that evening, but no-one batted an eyelid. Every time Shiva commanded them to repeat some gibberish he was schpeiling, they repeated it willingly, like hypnotised gollums.
And that was part of his patter... to heal the victim (I can think of no other word) that he was "reading", he would incant doggerel aphorisms that the victim was supposed to repeat, and the entire audience was supposed to join in... and they all did... all except me, sitting fuming in my darkened corner... and I was fuming, because I loathe and detest charlatans... and this Shiva dude was a charlatan of the worst kind... that is, he knew fine well what he was doing!
Shiva's performance that evening left a really bad taste in my mouth... a taste that lingers even unto this day. He was one of the most blatant examples of New Age frauds that I have ever seen up close and personal... and what really blew me away was that everyone just lapped him up... like they were desperate to believe in him, in the Akashic Records... and I guess, in God too. I think that is the nub of it; that desperation to believe in something, because without something to believe in, what is left? A cold universe full of cold nothing. which is utterly indifferent to our small and brief existence.
